A moratorium is the practice of suspending the sales of films on

home video Home video is prerecorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD, Blu-ray and streaming me ...

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

, VHS, and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

and boxed sets after a certain period of time.

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., doing business as Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, is the home entertainment distribution arm of The Walt Disney Company. The division handles the distribution of Disney's films, television series, an ...

was famous for this practice, known as the "

Disney Vault The "Disney Vault" was a term formerly used by The Walt Disney Company for its policy of regularly placing sales moratoria on home video releases of specific animated feature films. Each Walt Disney Animation Studios film was available for purcha ...

," in which it would only sporadically sell home videos of

animated films Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

in the Disney catalogue, until 2019 when a program of undeletions and re-releases ultimately restored all Disney titles into simultaneous print on home entertainment for the first time and on

Disney+ Disney+ is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned and operated by the Media and Entertainment Distribution division of The Walt Disney Company. The service primarily distributes films and television se ...

streaming service. The

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...

film library (with the notable exception of ''

The Rocky Horror Picture Show ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' is a 1975 musical comedy horror film by 20th Century Fox, produced by Lou Adler and Michael White and directed by Jim Sharman. The screenplay was written by Sharman and actor Richard O'Brien, who is also ...

'') was placed into moratorium and removed from theaters following Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019 according to a ''Vulture'' article; the decision noted the different policies between Fox, which had made most of its film archive available to theaters at all times, and Disney, which did (and does) not.

History

Disney was the first studio that put its films on moratorium. In 2002,

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...

used this practice with the release of the ''

Back to the Future ''Back to the Future'' is a 1985 American science fiction film directed by Robert Zemeckis, and written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, and Thomas F. Wilson. Set in 1985, ...

'' DVD boxed set due to widescreen framing problems. George Lucas also used this practice with the 2004 '' Star Wars'' original trilogy DVD boxed set. However, the moratorium was lifted on ''

'' in 2009 before the release of the 25th anniversary

set on October 26, 2010, and on ''Star Wars'', once '' Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith'' was released to theatres on May 19, 2005, and releasing the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy on DVD on September 12, 2006.

Controls

Disney itself stated that the practice of moratorium was done to both control their market and to allow Disney films to be fresh for new generations of young children. The practice of moratorium has been frowned upon by consumers because it forces higher sale prices. A normal DVD that is sold under moratorium can sell at retail for a very high price relative to the general run of DVDs. However, prices are known to drop near the end of the issue. In the past, a moratorium created urgency for people interested in a film to obtain it before it became unavailable. A side effect of the moratorium process was the fact that videos and DVDs of films, once they are placed on moratorium, would become

collector's item A collectable (collectible or collector's item) is any object regarded as being of value or interest to a collector. Collectable items are not necessarily monetarily valuable or uncommon. There are numerous types of collectables and terms t ...

s. Additional unintended side-effects to the practice of moratorium had made films a prime target for internet piracy and bootleg sales.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moratorium (Entertainment) Criticism of intellectual property Retail processes and techniques Scarcity

History

Controls

See also

References